


Nesting In Hyde Park

by MajorEnglishEsquire



Series: SPN Spring Fling 2014 [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Animals, Birds, Cuddling & Snuggling, Kid Fic, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-23
Updated: 2014-04-23
Packaged: 2018-01-20 14:04:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1513208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorEnglishEsquire/pseuds/MajorEnglishEsquire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><a href="http://spnspringfling.livejournal.com/">SpnSpringFling</a> 2014, for <a href="http://choc-freckles.livejournal.com/">choc_freckles</a>, prompt one: Dean Winchester/Benny Lafitte/Castiel - kidfic</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nesting In Hyde Park

**Author's Note:**

  * For [frecklesarechocolate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/frecklesarechocolate/gifts).



> Loose interpretation of kidfic here; takes place in an AU where Dean, Benny, and Cas are around college-age. [Originally posted here](http://spnspringfling.livejournal.com/96538.html).

Dean thinks Benny is kidding until he sees for himself.

Benny is gentle, unfolding the dishtowel to reveal a beak nosing around and biting at the threads of the cloth. He keeps the little thing held close to his chest as he runs one finger over the pinions of a newly hatched baby bird.

"She's so tiny," Benny says, it looks especially so in his large hands.

"You already decided she's a 'she'?" This is bad. Next Benny's gonna tell him 'she' has a name.

"She don't take up too much space," Benny says, keeping his voice low and soothing. The bird looks tired. Under each stroke of his fingers, her little eyes close further and further. Her beak lets go of the threads she'd had a hold of.

She shudders once, her tiny little wings ticking up, and Dean will never admit it.  
But that's the moment he starts loving her.

He throws out some token objections to the size and placement of her cage. But after that, he starts looking online to see what kind of bird she is. What they should feed her. The best places to buy accessories with non-toxic materials.

When Cas gets back to the apartment after his classes, he drops everything, enthralled. Cas is the kind of dork who takes his coursework too seriously. They rarely see him on weekdays, he hardly goes to house parties with them on the weekends. Usually, he's got his nose in his books during the semester.

He's the first who thinks to bring over a shallow dish of water. The baby bird hobbles in her towel when Benny places it on the table. She's a little unstable. Can't quite figure out the dish except to clink her beak against it.

Cas dips his finger in the water and feeds it to her one drop at a time.

Dean clunks down in the chair next to him, completely suckered in, his heart in a vice over these three. Cas, who is fiercely loyal to his friends and roommates, who is intense about studying and practiced and careful in his personal life. Benny who is big and warm and sometimes goofy -- sometimes full-on frightening when he has to be.

And the both of them gently handling this tiny creature.

She makes her first sound when she's done with the water. She chirrups, almost squeaks.

"Oh, _baby_ ," he can't help but say and Cas and Benny laugh, but they help encourage her into his hands so he can touch her bitty wings.

«»

A guy in the park was walking his dog, Benny explains. She was sniffing around the base of a tree and barking and the guy was having a hard time keeping the dog from trying to carry the bird off. Benny scooped her up and said he'd find a nest to dump her in. But the nest was so high up. And he heard no other birds in the tree.

Cas leans over Dean's shoulder as they scroll through an image search.

He points. "That looks most like her. I think she's a monk parakeet."

"'Monk parakeets or quaker parrots... considered an invasive, nuisance species in Illinois,'" Dean reads off an article. He scoffs. Not his birdie. How could she possibly be a nuisance?

"She's gonna be purty n' green," Benny says from over Dean's other shoulder as they all crowd around the laptop.

"What should we call her?" Cas asks.

And they're off.

Benny keeps throwing out the names of his ex-girlfriends and other previous conquests until Dean notes that it's really not complimentary and actually kind of douchey. Castiel spouts the names of angels like those are even words Dean can fucking pronounce.

He kind of wants to name her after his mom, but he worries about what Sam would think if he ever heard about the bird. Is it disrespectful?

The obvious solution, then, is to call in objective parties.

Meg shows up because Benny was supposed to help her fix something on her motorcycle. She is, somehow, unphased by the cuteness.

"I think you should call him Scrambled. Like the scrambled egg he fell out of when he hit the ground," she smirks.

Cas is too offended for words and retreats to another room with the baby in his palm, cradling her close, protectively.

Benny is unamused and plucks at Meg's jacket, dragging her back outside while she laughs. "What?! Hahaha! What's wrong with a little scramble?!"

Castiel calls his mom and dad's house, though Dean doesn't see why that would help. They're the ones who gave him that kooky name to begin with. They'll probably only agree they should name her Tzaphquiel or whatever. But his brother Gabe is the only one home at the time and he picks up the phone.

"Petrie," Gabe says, like it's a no-brainer. "Because she should be flyer, not a faller."

To their dead silence, Gabe says. "What? _Land Before Time_? No? I get nothing? You guys didn't have traumatic enough childhoods."

They hang up on him.

("My childhood was plenty traumatic," Cas says, after, still glaring at the phone.)

And Dean calls Sam, because he always calls Sam when he needs to know things, when he needs help or he needs the truth.

Dean explains the whole story of how Benny found her. Sam listens with just the right mix of amusement and indulgence for his brother. After the story, seemingly out of the blue, he says, "You know who I was thinking of this morning? Karen. Remember her?"

"Wow. Yeah. That was a long time ago." Karen Singer had been Bobby's wife. Bobby had kind of taken over, when they were in high school, after the accident that claimed both their parents. Karen hadn't been around, then, only when they were really young, when mom and dad would drop them off to visit Uncle Bobby. But every time they came over, when they were kids, she'd feed Sam and Dean, watch out for them, take them on adventures. Karen never had kids of her own, but she said running with them, with 'her boys,' was all she needed.

Dean hand-feeds half a strawberry to the bird while he talks to Sam. He remembers Karen, not as clearly as mom, but he remembers her smile and her hair in the wind and her pies.

"Kerri, you think?" Dean asks. "Would that be good? Is that a name for a bird?"

Sam laughs. "I donno. I'm a dog person, Dean, and you know it."

It fits, though. Dean explains about Karen to Benny and Cas. How she died. How him and Sam and Bobby got left all alone, but in the house where they lived until they left for college -- the place where they still visit Bobby -- Karen is still everywhere, in the fabric of the curtains and the smell of the kitchen and the wild little garden out back.

Kerri may not sound like a bird's name but it's not a silly name.

And, after her feathers fluff out and she learns how to hop all over the apartment and her voice grows and she makes a ruckus, "Kerri!" is one of the first things Kerri is able to squawk.

"Caaaaas," she says drawn out and almost like a growl, in an imitation of Dean's voice. And "Big Benny," too. She recognizes Dean by the name "Cas," too, because he's hollering it so often. They try to get her to say "Dean," but she never really does.

Kerri is, in all truth, Benny's baby. No matter how much Dean coddles her and how often they chatter and make noise (so much noise) at each other, Benny's her daddy.

Benny's Instagram is lousy with pictures of himself looking fresh before nights out at the club until Kerri invades his life. It's then that he gets to fully realize his childhood fantasies of becoming a pirate. He walks around everywhere, even outside, to the park, at lunch, with Kerri on his shoulder. His twitter pics get oodles of "awww"s in response to his daily updates.

Cas has to claim his own time with Kerri by force. He kidnaps her after dinner and she punches holes in the papers on his desk while he studies. He cradles her in his palm and pets her while he reads in bed. They chatter at each other and he teaches her long, complicated sentences through concentrated, persistent repetition. Then they talk like ducks. They literally quack at each other which drives Benny nuts and never fails to amuse Dean into hysterics. It becomes the resident party trick, besides all the long words she can say. Cas will start quaking at Kerri and she'll quack back and they'll do it until Kerri descends into messy squawks.

It's weird how it charms the ladies at their house parties.

Then, one day, Kerri flies.  
And Kerri doesn't come back.

Benny returns from lunch out, late, hours after he left. Red-faced, sweaty, angry and sad. And without Kerri on his shoulder.

"It was some damn kid in the park. Came screaming up to us, grabbing at her and she flew right off. I didn't expect it!" he tries to defend himself. "She hadn't done but hopped all around us before! I didn't know she could go that far! And she was gone. Into the damn trees. I couldn't find her anywhere. I climbed a few. Wrecked my damn knees falling out of them. Looked like a lunatic."

They try not to blame Benny for it. After all, he's fucking devastated. Kerri is his little girl. He works from home so she spends more time with him than anybody.

All three of them try to reassure each other. If she can fly, she can survive. She's spent all her life so far around three big humans, after all. And she handles most their guests and friends and visiting family pretty well.

But, to themselves, they can't help but think: _she's just a baby_.

Their baby. The apartment is so quiet without her chatter.

«»

It's been getting colder the past few days. Cas can see his breath while he walks home in the drizzling rain, early, from a morning class that had been cancelled.

On the railing of the stairs leading up to their building. A flash of green and blue.

She lands on a bush and doesn't speak a word or make a noise. Cas adjusts his bag on his shoulder and comes closer. "Kerri?" he says, softly.

She hops to a branch closer. "Kerri," Cas says with relief. It's definitely her. More gray than green at her belly. The wonky feather that always sticks up at the side of her neck. He approaches with care. "Step up?" he asks her, offering his hand.

"Step up," she repeats. And does.

«»

The creak of a door wakes Dean. It looks like an overcast, lousy day outside. Benny won't be up yet. And Cas should already be gone.

He throws a shirt on over his boxers and creeps into the hall. Cas's room is open and he hears soft talking.

Dean doesn't think there's any harm in peeking in.

Cas is lying on his bed with something scrambling across his sheets. He just lets it. It takes hold of his shirt and uses it to crawl up his arm.

"Kerri?" he says, all disbelief.

Cas looks up, smiles, and motions Dean in.

"Hey, Benny!" Dean hollers over his shoulder, loud enough to wake him up.

Dean crosses the room and gets on the bed. He climbs over Cas and budges up into his side. Kerri crawls from Cas's belly to Dean's side and they pet her in turn, relief unspoken.

"How-- where--" Benny sputters in the doorway, stunned, eyes focused on the bird. On _his_ little bird.

Cas grins at them both and then pats the bed to his right. Benny scrambles on, too, and reaches out to Kerri. She nips his hand, as if to tell him to wait his turn. Eventually she crawls from Dean, back to Cas, across his chest, and climbs onto Benny, where she allows him to cup his hands around her and hold her close.

"Oh, baby. Where you been all this time?"

Kerri doesn't respond. She punches little holes in his sleep shirt with her sharp beak, something he would normally put a stop to, but for now, he doesn't care where she climbs and scrambles. She still seems a little tense from her extended adventure outside, but he can't wait for her to get back to chattering her head off.

They don't feel ridiculous there, the three of them, crowded onto Cas's bed and doting on their little girl. They reach across each other and place her on one another's bellies and tease her attention away with their fingers. She chases them and plays.

"Let's go make you grits for breakfast, honey," Benny says, scooping her up off Dean's lap.

They spend the rainy day inside with their baby, unabashedly cuddled together and sharing her affection. Benny pulls Dean and Cas into his arms with Kerri perched atop his head and they smile for his camera. Proud papas.


End file.
